John Lewis Vouchers.

Eric Johnson - all will become clear...

How am I going to nip out later to a mums' knees-up in wine bar to give a friend the John Lewis vouchers I have collected for her birthday, when it's Middle One's birthday today too? I'll have to see how it pans out later after the party...

I think the quid pro quo has been good: we dished out a load of cheap pizza to twelve teenage boys who came round to celebrate ("it's not a party, we're just hanging out") along with what husband rather charmingly likes to call ‘pop’, all from Lidl, and they each give Middle One a tenner. 

At least, the quid pro quo is good for Middle One. He now has £120 in addition to everything he wanted from his Amazon wish list (all procured by loving mother), including the wretched Eric Johnson CD and DVD. Eric Johnson is a guitarist, by the way, and I'll get be getting back to him later...

On another matter entirely (but there is a link I promise, albeit tenuous), I’ve decided to make a virtue of the fact that I’ve never seen Homeland or The Wire or King of Thrones or Breaking Bad and I now have to add The Killing, series 3, (as well as 1 and 2) to the list. We don't even have the box sets.

In my defence it's not my fault. I’m married to someone who doesn’t like watching TV unless it's University Challenge or Mastermind or a documentary about Hitler and/or railways and also of late, inexplicably, Strictly Come Dancing. (Maybe it's not so inexplicable, it's the scantily clad ladies.) 

I'd love to watch all of The Killing etc, preferably in one sitting having escaped to hide in a motel room somewhere in the middle of nowhere for a week with some nameless hunk (okay not nameless, it's Brad Pitt, as in Thelma and Louise). But then, I suppose, if I was with nameless hunk in a motel room I wouldn't be very interested in watching a load of box sets...

When I do get to sit down and watch something on TV in that precious 9.00 - 10.00 pm window, by which time I am an inert lump, it’s invariably with Middle One after husband has fallen asleep, Youngest has gone to bed and Eldest has escaped to his room, saying: “I don’t want to be with you people,” and it's usually QI or The Big Bang Theory. But there are some programmes we agree on: anything involving cookery or a documentary. 

Consequently I could tell you anything you want to know about quantum physics, the Vikings and Victoria sponge - and I’m sure there’s some clever link I could make here between the three but I just had a load of 14-year-old boys in the house and then (spoiler alert) went to a wine bar so I don’t think my synapses are firing quite as they should.

Oh, and the other thing he'll watch, and we can sort of agree on, is any of the Jeeves and Wooster episodes we have from the box set (I'll watch Hugh Laurie in anything) or Sherlock Holmes, preferably the old Jeremy Brett ones (how camp is that man!).

But this evening, Saturday, still technically his birthday, when we flop in front of the telly, Middle One wants to watch his new Eric Johnson DVD, "live from Austin, Texas", that some twerp bought from his Amazon wish list and which is, sadly, his prerogative. 

It's so dull as to be inducing a hypnotic trance so I plead friend’s birthday and the necessity of delivering said vouchers and ask if he doesn't mind me popping out (it is 10 pm) and he says he doesn't. Hooray.

Unfortunately I leave the John Lewis vouchers behind on the hall shelf because, as I say, my synapses are not firing.

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